Mary Douglas leakey

Mary Douglas Leakey, then named Mary Nicol Douglas, was born on February 6, 1913 in London, England. Throughout her childhood, Mary was educated but not in a traditional sense. Because she traveled often to France with her parents, she was taught informally by a French governess. She also learned a lot from the Paleolithic sites she visited in the Les Eyziés and Périgord regions of France which kindled her interest in the field of archaeology (Hagar, 1997). After her father died when she was thirteen years old, Mary and her mother moved back to England, and Mary was enrolled in a traditional school. Attempts to formally educate Mary were unsuccessful, though, as she “quickly learned what to do in order to ensure expulsion from more than one school” (Hagar, 1997, p.15). Despite never being formally educated, Mary was educated. She attended lectures at the University College, London in the fields of archaeology and geography, though most of her knowledge was gained through attending archaeological digs (Tobias, 1998). Like her father, a famous landscape painter, Mary was a talented artist (Tobias, 1998), and through her drawings, she was able to get a position in the field of archaeology. In the early 1930s, Mary joined Dorothy Liddell in her excavations of an early Neolithic site in Devon. On this excavation, many ancient stone tools were discovered, which Mary drew for publication (Hagar, 1997; Tobias, 1998). Mary's drawings for Dorothy Liddell were noticed by another prominent archaeologist, Dr. Gertrude Caton-Thompson, who asked Mary to illustrate for her excavation site in Fayum, Egypt. Working for Dr. Caton-Thompson was a career altering opportunity for Mary because in 1935, another archaeologist, Louis Leakey, was searching for a talented artist to illustrate his book, “Adam's Ancestors” (Tobias, 1998) and Dr. Caton-Thompson suggested Mary. Mary accepted the position and, soon after partaking in a few other digs in England (Hagar, 1997), she left for Africa with Louis Leakey, marking the beginning of a life-long partnership both in fieldwork and in marriage (Tobias, 1998). Later on in the year 1935, Mary and Louis went back to England. They lived together while Louis was in the process of divorcing his first wife, and then he and Mary were married in 1936. After their marriage, the Leakeys returned to East Africa which is where they remained for the rest of their lives (Hagar, 1997). Mary and Louis had four children together, although one of their children died during infancy. Mary, however, did not let pregnancy or childrearing affect her work. Because the Leakeys believed in a “hands-on” approach to archaeology rather than an education based approach, Louis and Mary's children accompanied them to most of their archaeological digs and were often encouraged to “go off and find their own fossils,” which they sometimes did (Hagar, 1997, pg.16). Mary worked as Louis's assistant for nearly twenty-five years before she was considered a paleoarchaeologist independent from Louis (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.). Before this, many of Mary's discoveries, including the skull of the sixteen-million-year-old Miocene ape Proconsul africanus (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.), the rock paintings at Kondoa-Irangi, and most of her discoveries at Olduvai Gorge, were credited to Louis (Tobias, 1998). This is because, at the time, opportunities to obtain positions in the field of archaeology were unfairly granted more often to men than to women, especially in the realm of excavations and fossil analysis (Hagar, 1997). According to Lori Hagar, “many women end up playing “back-up” roles to the more “famous” fossil-hunters” (1997, p. 15), which is exactly what happened to Mary Leakey until the year 1959 when she made a discovery in the Olduvai Gorge that both set her apart from Louis as an independent archaeologist and completely transformed the study of human evolution, although other sources suggest that Mary didn't receive credit for her contributions until 1964 after yet another astounding discovery (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.). In 1959 on a visit to Olduvai Gorge, Mary discovered a hominid molar and fragments of a hominid skull, which, after being pieced together by Mary herself, proved to belong to the species Paranthropus boisei, an early hominid whose fossils were dated back 1.7 million years by the then newfound technology of potassium-argon dating (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.). The discovery of such a recent human ancestor contributed greatly to the understanding of human evolution, as before this discovery was made, the tools created and used by these hominids were the only evidence anthropologists and paleoarchaeologists had of their existence (Tobias, 1998). Mary's discovery of Paranthropus boisei offered a telling start to the beginning of human taxonomy, though her contributions did not end there. While excavating Olduvai Gorge in 1960, Mary discovered the remains of a closer hominid relative to humans, Homo habilis, as well as the limb bones of another close relative, Homo erectus (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.). This contribution to the study of human evolution was extremely significant because the remains of these two species of hominids were so similar to the anatomy of humans that they were considered to belong to the same genus, giving taxonomists a direct line of descent from apes and early hominids to humans. At the time though, despite anatomical evidence including the structure of the skeleton and the positioning of the foramen magnum in both species, there was no solid evidence that these two species of hominids, or any species for that matter, actually did stand upright and walk on two legs in a fashion similar to that of humans. It wasn't until almost twenty years later that this highly coveted evidence was uncovered. In 1974, Mary began her excavation in Laetoli in search of footprints that would reveal that early hominids were in fact bipedal like their human successors. Four years later, her work paid off when she discovered an eighty foot long trail of footprints fossilized in volcanic ash that was dated back 3.7 million years to an early hominid known as Australopithecus afarensis (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d). While in Laetoli, Mary also found at least 11 fossils of teeth and jaw bones which she believed also belonged to the genus Homo. These fossils dated back to around 3.75 million years, thus adding an extra one million years to the previously “established record of evidence of human origins” (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 2013). In response to her many valuable contributions to the study of human evolution and origins, Mary was awarded multiple honorary doctorate degrees from varying institutions. Her first honorary doctorate was received in 1968 from the University of Witwatersrand, which was awarded not only for her contributions to the study, but also for the annual lecture tours she began teaching in the United States in 1962. Mary was awarded degrees from Yale, Oxford, Columbia, and Cambridge as well (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.). When Mary's story is viewed through an American ideological lens, her lack of formal education as both a child and an adult should have kept her from being successful in the future, but her lack of schooling obviously did not hinder her ability to be successful in the field in which she chose to work. Because she did not have to attend school every day and learn subjects she was not interested in, Mary was able to focus on learning subjects related to archaeology as well as gain hands-on knowledge and experience through being present at archaeological excavations. Mary became one of the most esteemed archaeologists and arguably contributed the most to the study of human evolution and origins even though she was not formally educated in a school. In addition to her honorary degrees, Mary also received the National Geographic magazine's Hubbard Medal and the Prestwych Medal of the Geological Society of London, among many others (Hubbard and William Smith Colleges, 2013). Mary Douglas Leakey spent the rest of her life living in Olduvai and died on December 9, 1996 at the age of eighty-three. Months before her death, she returned to Laetoli “for a final look at her last great discovery,” the Laetoli footprints, which the Tanzanian government and the Getty Conservation Institute had agreed to protect “with a high-tech synthetic covering” (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.). Mary was cremated and her ashes were scattered at Olduvai (Society of Antiquaries of London, n.d.), a gesture symbolic of her contributions to the study of human evolution that will never be forgotten.